LAKESIDE SAND& GRAVEL

• Screened Topsoil (Stored in a hoop house on site.)

• Granite & Sandstone Boulders

From 8” to 12’+ priced per ton and per piece on request. 1’-2’ granite and 2’-3’ granite available, presorted, for immediate pick up.

• Mixed Boulders (Available for immediate pick up.)

• Washed Gravel, Concrete & Mason Sand.

• Crushed Gravel & Limestone products available. - ALL PRODUCTS AVAILABLE

Glatt, managing partner of GrowTheBench. “People don’t ask, ‘What’s your budget?’ People don’t know how and when they’re going to make a decision. They don’t ask those qualifying questions upfront.”

• Prioritize workplace flexibility. Workers prefer jobs that provide more flexibility over those that offer more vacation days. To the extent possible, give workers a say in their schedule, work conditions, work organization, work location, and work tasks.

• Match tasks to abilities. Use self-paced work, selfdirected rest breaks, and less repetitive tasks.

Create Sales Scorecards

It’s hard for your sales employees to know where they need to improve and where they are succeeding if you aren’t tracking their key performance indicators. Sales scorecards hold your sales reps accountable, and identifies top performers and areas where your sales process can improve.

• Avoid prolonged, sedentary work. Prolonged, sedentary work is bad for workers at every age. Consider sit/stand workstations and walking workstations for workers who traditionally sit all day. Provide onsite physical activity opportunities or connections to low-cost community based options.

• Provide health promotion and lifestyle interventions including physical activity, healthy meal options, tobacco cessation assistance, risk factor reduction and screenings, coaching, and onsite medical care. Accommodate medical self-care in the workplace and time away for health visits.

• Invest in training and building worker skills and competencies at all age levels. Help older employees adapt to new technologies, often a concern for employers and older workers.

• Proactively manage reasonable accommodations and the return-to-work process after illness or injury absences.

Scorecards can also help with the gamification of the sales team and drive healthy competition. They should encourage behaviors that drive more sales, such as making more calls or improving the qualification process. With sales scorecards, sales reps can easily see where they need to improve, and it provides clear-cut goals in their day-to-day.

• Manage hazards. Including noise, slip/trip hazards, and physical hazards – conditions that can challenge an aging workforce more.

• Provide and design ergo-friendly work environments. Workstations, tools, floor surfaces, adjustable seating, better illumination where needed, and screens and surfaces with less glare.

• Require aging workforce management skills training for supervisors. Include a focus on the most effective ways to manage a multi-generational workplace.

Don’t forget to set goals, as these metrics won’t mean much without context. To determine goals for individual sales reps, work backward with the quota you’re wanting them to reach and what steps they have to take to hit that quota.

• Utilize teams and teamwork strategies for agingassociated problem solving. Workers closest to the problem are often best equipped to find the fix.

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Coach Them

If you have sales scorecards, analyze them on a weekly basis as they provide specific coaching opportunities.

Not all of your salespeople are going to be rockstars from day one, but this doesn’t mean they can’t be. Taking the time to invest in them and coach them along can significantly boost their abilities.

If a rep has strong first appointment numbers but their closing ratio is low, they might be failing to meet with the decision-makers who can close the sale. Or they could be failing to establish the level of trust a decision-maker needs to sign the contract. Both of these cases call for coaching to reduce these types of issues.

Have one-on-ones to review their performance and discuss the individual’s goals, where they can improve and how they can take their performance to the next level. Celebrate their wins and have them set new goals for the upcoming week.

Invest In Estimating Software

If your sales staff are responsible for project estimating as well as closing on projects, you need to take advantage of the various types of technology available to overcome bottlenecks that can occur in the process.

Estimating can be time-consuming if your employees still have to go out to sites to measure properties. There are a number of automated property measurement options out there, including SiteRecon, RealGreen’s Measurement Assistant and Go iLawn. Meanwhile, takeoff tools can aid in determining how much of each material is needed to complete a landscape job.

Other all-in-one estimating software can not only generate estimates but provide proposal templates with custom designs. This can help your sales team get accurate, professional proposals out faster and allows them to focus on the next potential lead.

This article was posted to the the National Association of Landscape Professionals (NALP) webblog, located at https://blog.landscapeprofessionals.org, by content manager Jill Odom. The National Association of Landscape Professionals offers you access to the best professionals and experts in the business along with education and programs to help grow and increase profits, improve operations and safety, and set your company apart from the competition.